SOA legislation passes House

SOA Watch tells me that the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010 that it was backing passed in the house this afternoon. Tom Roberts[1] and I blogged[2] on this earlier.

The amendment forces the public release of names, rank, country of origin, courses and dates of attendance of graduates and instructors of the Army's intelligence school at Fort Benning, Ga. formerly known as the School of Americas (SOA) and now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. Graduates of the school have been implicated in human rights violations and deaths of activists and church workers across Latin America.

The amendment was approved with a 224 to 190 vote. Now the amendment has to be approved by a joint House-Senate committee.